Arguments in the online outcry

Proposition: The AWL is racist What's the evidence for this? The AWL is not one article, but a totality made up of the 47 years of our tendency's existence all the policy we have agreed upon, all the articles we have written, and all the class-struggle activity we have undertaken in that time. Where is the substantive evidence within that totality that we are racist? There is none. In fact, and obviously, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Our record on questions of anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigning, migrant solidarity, and explicit commitment to the principle of open borders, is better than many other groups on the left. Any claim that the AWL is racist must be substantiated with reference to that 47-year totality. Proposition: The 2006 article is racist The online outcry against the article has in fact been an outcry against 118 of its 2,657 words. To substantiate the claim that the article makes a racist argument, the 118 offending words must be placed in the context of the article as a whole (and the article as a whole must, in turn, be placed in the context of the 47-year totality which the AWL represents). What does the article argue? It argues that religion, and particularly Islam and Christianity, are growing as forces in world politics, to a degree unseen for centuries, and that this growth should be a source of alarm for socialists. It argues that both the collapse of Arab nationalism and global inequality are catalysts for the growth of Islamism, but that it cannot be understood merely as a reaction or blowback, but rather has its own internal and indigenous dynamics. The article argues that the growth of Islamism exists in symbiosis with the growth of militant Christian fundamentalism, which the article describes as as irrational as anything in the Islamic world. The article concludes by arguing that only class-struggle socialism can pose a meaningful alternative to both the actual spread of religion and politico-religious ideas, and the system which create the conditions of oppression and inequality which fuel its growth. Is this a racist argument? Nothing in the online outcry has attempted to argue that it is. Nothing in the online outcry has attempted to argue that the article's central argument is anything other than this. So in what sense is the article, as a totality, racist? Proposition: The 118 words are racist What is being argued in the 118 words? Sean Matgamna uses a historical trend (the attitude of 7th and 8th century desert tribes to growing towns a real historical phenomenon, commented on by Engels and the 14th century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun) as an analogy for the attitude of contemporary Islamism (which, the article argues, is now influential in much of the Islamic world) towards the hegemonic imperialist powers in the west. Is this racist? Islamists themselves are explicit in their identification and affinity with primitive Muslim societies (in the literal sense of primitive).

Proposition: Racists compare contemporary Muslims to 'backwards' societies of the past. The article does this. No, the article discusses the political outlook of contemporary Islamists with reference to societies of the past. Whether those societies are indeed backwards and primitive, or rather an ideal to be aspired towards (as the Islamists contend), is a matter of political assessment, but it cannot be necessarily, in and of itself, racist to mention this. Proposition: The image of Arabian tribes 'sharpening their knives' echoes racist motifs of contemporary Muslim immigration having an 'invasive' character and explicitly aiming to attack or destroy 'western values' But the article does not use this image with reference to immigration but rather as an analogy for Islamist attitudes towards "the west". Perhaps another analogy would have served the argument better. But the claim that Islamist attitudes towards the west are characterised by often-violent hostility is irrefutable. We reject notions of "western values", as if ideas such as democracy and feminism are the sole property of "the west". Some of what Islamism opposes in "the west" - the imperialist adventures of western governments, for example - we also oppose. But we oppose them for different reasons. Islamist hostility to "the west" is inseparable from its positive, and profoundly reactionary, political project. Proposition: The reference to the 'Gates of Vienna' is racist, because racists use the Ottoman invasion of Europe to scaremonger about contemporary Muslim immigration. Yes, but the article doesn't. As stated previously, the AWL's position on immigration (by Muslims or anyone else) is very clear. The article refers to the Gates of Vienna as part of a rhetorical flourish referencing its previous assertion that religion is now a greater force in politics than it has been at any point since the 17th century. One might criticise the use of such a flourish for the ease with which it could be misinterpreted, or even argue that the motif is now so effectively owned by right-wingers that it cannot but be misinterpreted and should therefore be avoided (although such an argument would also exclude a great deal of other figurative language). But the online outcry has not argued this; it has simply asserted that the mere use of the phrase automatically makes the article, and/or the AWL, racist, regardless of the phrase's context in the article or the article's context in the totality of the AWL's politics. Proposition: The article is not racist, but it is Islamophobic and/or Orientalist What do these terms (Islamophobia and Orientalism) mean? If Islamophobia means hostility and opposition to (or even, if you like, fear of) Islam, as a system of ideology and a politico-social force, the article is very Islamophobic indeed. By this definition, the whole of materialist-humanist revolutionary politics (not just Marxism but class-struggle anarchism too) is necessarily militantly Islamophobic, and Christianophobic, Judeophobic, Hinduphobic, and so on.

Much of the online outcry has suggested, implicitly or explicitly, that in conditions where Muslims face social prejudice which sometimes manifests as bigoted intolerance of their religion, any attempt to criticise or oppose that religion necessarily feeds into that prejudice. This is an idea that has to be resisted. It can only lead to self-censorship and boycotting crucial aspects of our politics (militant secularism, humanism, and materialism). Those who deploy the term Islamophobia as if its meaning is clear-cut or uncontested should be challenged to explain themselves. If they mean by the term the general atmosphere of prejudice and intolerance towards Muslim people and their religion (which, because most Muslims are non-white, has an objectively racist social function), they should say that. On that, our policy is again quite clear. We have carried Defend Muslims and mosques as a headline on our newspaper, are actively involved in militant anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigning, and have written and campaigned extensively against scaremongering about immigration. And what does Orientalism mean? An othering of the East, as a homogenous bloc? Again: look at the totality of AWL's politics. We have fought against the idea of dividing the world into homogenous blocs of any kind, arguing instead for a class analysis that sees struggles between workers and bosses in all countries as paramount, rather than struggles between imperialists and anti-imperialists, east and west, or global north and global south. Again, our record of solidarity with workers' struggles in the east (in Iraq, Indonesia, Iran, Kurdistan, Egypt, and elsewhere) is better than most groups on the left. If it cannot be argued that the article is making an Orientalist argument, or that the offending phrases are making an Orientalist argument, or that there is anything in the AWL's policy or political practise which could meaningfully be described as Orientalist, then one is left with an essentially journalistic criticism about the choice to deploy certain images or analogies. Anyone, inside the AWL and out, should be free to make such criticisms, but they would have a very different character from an online outcry that has seen us denounced as racist, Islamophobic, and Orientalist. Proposition: The problem is not just with the article, but with 'structural racism' within the AWL What does this mean? That, internally, the AWL discriminates against non-white people? That there is internal prejudice against our non-white members? That we are hostile to non-white people in a structured, organised way? This claim is made without substantiation. The AWL is an overwhelmingly white organisation. The far-left as a whole (including, and probably especially, the anarchist left, and particularly the Bloomsbury anarchist left) is overwhelmingly white. That is in a sense a reflection of structural racism - the left as a whole recruits heavily from posh universities, which, because of systemic racism, non-white people often find it harder to access. Could AWL, and other left groups, do more to combat the reflection of that systemic racism inside our own organisations? Undoubtedly, just as we must always work harder and improve our culture to minimise the ways in which sexist power dynamics are reflected inside left organisations (as we all know they sometimes are - grotesquely and spectacularly in recent cases in the SWP and SP, but more subtly inside all left-wing and labour movement organisations, including our own).

But the online outcry has not addressed this question; it has made the plain statement the AWL is racist, pointed for evidence only to 118 words in one article, and then repeated the claim at an increasingly shrill pitch. This is not a rational way to conduct any political debate. If our detractors' claim is that neither the arguments of the article as a whole, nor our democratically-decided policy on the issues (racism, immigration, etc.), nor our record of past and current activity on those questions, nor Sean's intention in using the language which has caused offence, nor anything at all, makes any difference whatsoever, and that their particular reading of 118 words in an article is the only relevant consideration to deciding the question of whether or not the AWL, as a totality, is racist... this is not a starting point it's possible to have a meaningful engagement with. This is indeed a hyper postmodernism in which nothing but discourse matters and which our detractors' arrived-at truth (that we are racist) is unchangeable by any reference to objective, material context. They are essentially saying: I've decided you are racist, and if you want proof, my proof is the fact that I've decided it. On the basis both of the form of the discussion, and its substance (or lack thereof), we should unapologetically defend ourselves and our political record.